I had a dream that I lived in a world where I could listen to darn near any music of my choosing, watch darn near any movie I wanted, buy things from darn near anywhere in the world and look at darn near any art all without ever leaving my Aeron Chair.

Last year at this time the cicadas crawled out of the earth and filled our ears with the cacophony of their singing. This is supposed to happen every seventeen years or so but for some reason the sonorous bugs are not staying asleep and dormant as they are supposed to and are back buzzing away again against all scientific facts and logic. Nothing is as it appears anymore, and as welcome as the buzzing might be there is an ominous sense that something is not right on the Ponderosa. Not to worry because we’ve discovered some wonderful new and sort-of-new music that will drown out all that unreal noise and hopefully soothe any sense of foreboding you might have from all the absurdity and buzzing going on.

When Keetakawee Punpeng sent me the Nimitra Computer Audio Server for evaluation, he told me that he was working on a linear power supply for the Nimitra. Given the numerous designs available for a linear power supply, Keetakawee spent a good deal of time building different prototypes until he found a design that he felt achieved the sonic performance he was looking for. The result was the Nikola Linear Power Supply; a power supply that was not only designed for the Nimitra, but also designed to work well with NUCs, media players, and other devices running up to 12VDC. Consider this mini-review a continuation of my Nimitra Computer Audio Server review.

There's still a small war raging against MQA on the interwebs. While I'm not surprised, as there are countless small wars still raging on the interwebs, I thought I'd have some fun with the inherent contradictions raging in any small war on the interwebs. Enjoy!

The enjoyment of music is such a personal thing, but we love to share that joy with friends. And in reading many of the Lovely Recordings entries one thing that seems to be missing is demo material for my friends. My own personal listening is greatly varied; but many of the buddies I have are not into jazz or Classical, so a lot of the wonderful suggestions in other entries are lovely but if I’m trying to expand the HiRes empire they’re not helpful weapons in conquering my friends. [Note: Of course each could be used as a whole album or individual tracks if pressed for time.]

Lulu gave the best hi-fi presentation I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. By a very long shot

Each year, Silbatone Acoustics shows up at Munich High End toting (container'ing?) a lovely mix of the (very) old and new; speakers of various vintages from Western Electric, their own electronics designed by J.C. Morrison, and analog front ends from Thomas Schick and Frank Schroeder. And each year I fall in love. But this year was different.